26 June 2012

Juris Diversitas
was founded in 2007. We're an
international, interdisciplinary community of individuals interested in
the
mixtures and movements of law and norms.

Originally comparatists, we've opened up dialogues with anthropologists, geographers,
historians, philosophers, and
sociologists, both within the law and beyond.

We host an annual conference, have already published a number of volumes, and recently agreed a Book Series with Ashgate Publishing.

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The Chief Bloggerwould be responsible for providing members and other blog readers with information on events,
publications, etc related to our theme. In addition, they would have primary responsibility for guiding the blog into the future.

JurisDiversitas is very pleased to announce that it has recently agreed a contract with Ashgate
Publishing (UK) for a Juris Diversitas Book Series.

More information
will be available in the months ahead, but the series is described as
follows:

Rooted
in comparative law, the Juris Diversitas Series focuses on the
interdisciplinary study of legal and normative mixtures and movements. Our
interest is in comparison broadly conceived, extending beyond law
narrowly understood to related fields. Titles might be geographical or temporal
comparisons. They could focus on theory and methodology, substantive law, or
legal cultures. They could investigate official or unofficial ‘legalities’,
past and present and around the world. And,
to effectively cross spatial, temporal, and normative boundaries, inter-
and multi-disciplinary research is particularly welcome.

The first volume in the series will be edited by Seán Patrick Donlan and Lukas Heckerdorn-Urscheler. It comes out of the 2012 Juris Diversitas conference co-organised with the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law. The volume, currently entitled Concepts
of law: Comparative,
Jurisprudential, and Social Science Perspectives, includes the following contributors: Marc Amstutz, Gerhard Anders, Roger
Cotterrell, Mariano Croce, Maximillian del Mar, Baudouin Dupret, Julia Eckert,
Andrew Halpin, Jaakko Husa, Alessio Lo Giudice, Salvatore Mancuso, Emmanuel Melissaris, Werner Menski, David
Nelken, William Twining, Catherine Valcke, and Mark van Hoecke.

While we
anticipate publishing future collections (original, conference-based, Festschriften,
etc), we’re also very interested in publishing monographs and student texts. Anyone interested in publishing in the Series should contact the General Editor, Seán Patrick Donlan (sean.donlan@ul.ie).

Note that special arrangements are also being made to provide the members of Juris Diversitas with discounts on publications in the Series.

French academics reacted to
announcements about a possible future European civil code ten years ago in the
way in which Americans reacted to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 1940:
first with shock, then with rearmament, finally with attempted counterattacks.
Military metaphors abound. Yet the defense of the French Code Civil against a
European civil code is tricky: they must defend one Code against another. The
images drawn of codes are therefor of particular interest for our understanding
both of civil codes and of legal nationalism. Often, two mutually exclusive
images are presented at the same time. In cultural terms, the code civil is both
traditional and revolutionary, both linguistically determined and independent
of its language, both an expression of values and merely formal and neutral.
Politically, the code civil is legitimated both in democracy and technocracy,
it expresses both self-determination and imperialism, it is about both
pluralism and universalism. Necessarily, in such juxtapositions, the same
characteristics must be assigned to a European Code, making the arguments
ultimately self-refuting. Nonetheless, the point is not to dismiss these
defenses. Rather, they should be understood as expressions of faith — and the
discussion over a European Code resembles, in part, a religious war.